NOTE: The Democratic party passed the original mandatory vaccine law in June of 2017, but now, a year later and in the midst of a revolution in Italy, parents will no longer have to comply. The Democrats originally used a measles outbreak as the fuel for the law’s passage.

ROME — Italian parents will no longer have to provide state-run schools with a doctor’s note to show that their children have been vaccinated, the country’s new populist government announced on Thursday — a move that raised alarm among experts who fear that compliance with vaccines will drop.

The new rule, announced at a news conference by Giulia Grillo, Italy’s health minister and a prominent member of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, requires only the assurance of parents that their children are immunized to enroll in school this September.

The government said its aim was to simplify enrollment procedures and enable school participation for all, including children whose parents do not have their paperwork in order yet.

More than 130 families in the Italian province of South Tyrol are allegedly threatening to seek asylum in Austria, just days after the Italian president signed a decree requiring mandatory vaccinations for school admission.

“The parents have already written to [Italian President] Mattarella, to the Austrian [President] Van der Bellen, as well as the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva,” anti-vaccination activist Reinhold Holzer told ANSA news agency.